A Lion's Cage
by FalseEyelashes
Summary: They could swap partners like some erotic square dance. They romance in the tongues of savagery. There are no dinner and movie dates there are no satin sheets or champagne bottles, no proposals on one knee. There are no rules and there are no distractions


**A Lion's Cage**

**Disclaimer: **If I really owned _Lost_, it's characters and/or its premise, do we really believe that I would be spending my time posting fanfiction online? I think we all know the answer to that one. And the opening quote belongs to Mike Nichols, _Closer_, not me. And the song lyrics are Interpol, "Not Even Jail," not me. Don't sue. Or get angry. Or mildly offended.

**Summary: **They could swap partners like some erotic square dance. They romance in the tongues of savagery. There are no dinner and movie dates; there are no satin sheets or champagne bottles, no proposals on one knee. There are no rules and there are no distractions. Just a simple game of want and lust and need. Just hostility and hate. Just innocent lies and love. Sawyer/Kate/Jack/Ana told in five acts.

**Rating: **R (sex, language, adult themes, some violence)

**Author's Note: **I think this might be my _Lost_ opus. It's ridiculously long, like 30-pages-plus long. It strangely enough started out scarcely a thousand words, if you can believe that, but then somehow grew into this monster of a story. This is character-driven, like just about anything I write, but a tangled character-driven mess and a tangled "love" story. I know the world hates Ana, and I might a little too, but there is far too much to explore with her and her relationship to Jack and Kate and by default, Sawyer. I guess this story was my attempt to try and elaborate on the untold aspects of all their relationships and I guess conjecture as to what might happen next. I wanted this to have a bit of a play format, yeah, didn't really happen. I tried though. This story picks up after "The Long Con" and the rest is purely imagination. Um, I hope you like this and I just want to say thanks for the awesome support of my other works. Thank you for reading, and enjoy.

* * *

_

* * *

It's a lie. It's a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it's beautiful because that's what they want to see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone. But the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, _

_and everyone loves a big fat _**lie**

– _**Closer**_

* * *

"Hate to say it, mate, but we're fucked, aren't we?" 

The surf stretches along the sandy shore, reaching up and up and out towards them, towards Charlie and Sawyer, sitting alone in the glow of a crackling fire.

Sawyer would wonder how it came to this, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, how he's stuck with a pop-rock, one-hit wonder as his outlaw partner in crime. But he already knows the answer.

It has been five days. Five days since the coup d'etat by a man who not only could barely pronounce the word but also thinks the French are a nation of queers and women with bad hygiene. Five days, and he's sitting on an arsenal the Alamo could have used when the siege finally came down.

And Sawyer sees the way they all look at him now. He's their Judas. He fucked them over and understands that they are going to let him know it with their sneaking glances and slow, cold, scarcely civil words in his direction.

He snorts at Charlie's words, a slightly delayed reaction. It isn't really funny, but rather, instead, true, and maybe that's what makes it laughable. He has always been one to laugh in the face of the truth. He thinks it might be just the same as laughing in the face of danger, an idea that has always been strangely appealing in his book.

He turns his head towards him, slow; chin raised, condescension slipping off him and into the cool night breeze.

"You ever hear the one about the cop, the con artist, the fugitive and the surgeon?" He waits a beat, and there's still no recognition on Charlie's face. "No?"

He watches Charlie appraise him, the furrowed brow, that question of sanity and why he is even sitting here with this man in the first place.

Sawyer turns back away, gazing off into the jungle, trees upon trees offering everything short of shade. He remembers the old adage: a tree crashes in a jungle and no one is there to hear it. Does it make a sound?

A plane crashes in a jungle. The survivors rip each other to shreds. Were they ever alive to begin with? Or was it all just a game of make-believe?

And he whispers into the night, maybe more so to himself than Charlie, maybe more to the unknown than anything else.

"I'll let you know someday how it ends. It ain't pretty, boy.

It ain't pretty."

* * *

**

* * *

**

**act I**

_I'll lay down my glasses  
__I'll lay down in houses  
__If things come alive_

* * *

The first rule is that none of this even matters. Rules are made to be broken, and if this, in it of itself, is a rule all its own, it makes one wonder if it's really just a lie.

We like to make rules regarding conduct among individuals. We acknowledge the unspoken guidelines and instructions regarding civil conversation and polite discourse. We have rules pertaining to sporting events and political debates, democratic elections and Hollywood high honors for the simple reason and naïve hope of a fair fight and a clear victor.

Their plane crashed on an island and their social contract has been termed null and void.

They have no obligation to society, to the world, to each other.

Maybe they are all the adverse of pure and clean and good and moral and that's why they're here in the first place.

Maybe they are all inherently fucked with a collection of perfectly proportioned flaws that might, someday, add up to something right once they figure out the correct equation.

It's a tangled tricky tango made all the more impossible by the lack of a dance card or choreographed movements.

There are no laws to break here. Only hearts. Only hearts.

But they'll lie. And we'll lie. We'll lie and pretend this, tarps over twigs and reclining airplane seats, is still a part of civilization. We will lie and pretend there is still something there, someone there, for all of us to follow.

We all lie to get what we want. We lie still in wait for it to befall us. We lie to convince ourselves that this is what we truly need. We lie.

We tell ourselves the bars aren't there to keep us in, but rather to hold them out, hold them out and keep them far, far away.

_- (change scene) -_

The sun rises, slow, impatient, and the first rumble of activity begins with the stretching dawn.

In the glow of the rising sun, Ana-Lucia stands there, shoes in one hand, toes curling into the sand. She just stands there and watches as her lengthening shadow covers the cross marking a grave.

This is the first time. And she imagines the last as well. This is the first and last time Ana has visited Shannon's grave.

It might have been all the Catholic school from her youth. Or maybe the guilty conscience clicking silently in the back of her mind. Whatever it was, it was keeping her from finding sleep, and now, exhausted and frustrated, she has had enough.

She calls this a last ditch effort. She calls this paying her respects.

"Well, well, well. Looks like someone's out and about at an early hour."

Ana never went to charm school. Her language isn't anything one would find in a grammar book or Miss Manners weekly column. That being said, she has never in her life met someone as tactless and rude as the man standing before her.

Sawyer.

He stands there, hip cocked to the side, hair a mess, clothes disheveled, the sleep still lingering in his heavy-lidded eyes.

She won't admit it, but she kind of likes it that she is no longer public enemy number one on the island. The suspicious glances and furtive brows are aimed at him instead of her. And she won't say it. But she kind of likes it.

"If you're right here, then who's watching your guns for you?"

His expression doesn't fall the way she expected it too. Instead, he smiles a little wider, and he might just be leering at her. She imagines that he's not.

"Depends on which weapon you're talking about…"

She scowls. "You're disgusting."

"Coming from you, Senorita, that is truly insulting." He inclines his head towards Shannon's grave, that same smile on his face, predatory and eager to kill, not out of hunger, but a depraved satisfaction all its own.

"You have a nice day, sugar."

She stays there after he leaves. Not really looking at anything in particular, just standing there, letting the morning creep up on her until there is no turning back.

"How long have you been standing here, honey?"

Ana turns around, and there's Rose, shuffling on over, hand raised to her eyes, blocking out the sun.

"Long enough," she answers.

And Rose stops in front of, pats her on the shoulder, and turns back to gaze at the ocean.

"You feel that? There's a storm rolling in…"

_- (change scene)_ -

"Where are you going?"

Jack pauses for a second, letting the water bottle overflow in the falls before him, and turns his head, just enough, to see Kate standing behind him.

He clears his throat and returns to the task at hand, wiping the wet bottle on the hem of his t-shirt.

"What makes you think I am going anywhere?"

He grabs another empty bottle and begins to fill it.

"Either you're really thirsty, or you're stocking up to head out for the day. I guessed the second."

He screws the top on the bottle tight, flipping it over and back up again, fiddling with it, staring straight ahead.

"What are you doing here, Kate?"

They have done studies. They'll put a baby in a room with his mother and hand the woman a baby doll. And she'll hold it and cradle it in her arms, and without fail, that baby, sitting there with its mother and a toy, will open its mouth. And wail the fucking house down.

Jealousy that innate, it's no wonder it only gets thicker with the passing of time and pain.

"I just thought…I'd come see you. I guess. Where are you going?"

He scratches the back of his neck and zips his backpack shut.

"Out. Sayid has been setting traps around the perimeter. I thought I'd give him a hand and set some of my own."

He pulls the bag onto his shoulders and shifts the weight around for a second.

"You want some company?"

He grits his teeth, hands on hips, and finally looks at her.

"What about you and Sawyer?"

He isn't quite sure what to call the expression that passes over her face. It isn't anxiety nor is it longing. It's just a glimmer and he tries to ignore it.

"There is no 'me and Sawyer,' Jack. You know that."

Looking at her without seeing, he thinks for a moment. Maybe, maybe they were all once a crystal ball, the future left to ambiguous interpretation, but the promise and cohesion all still there, letting everything roll a little farther on.

Something tells him Sawyer just threw it, threw them, against a wall, and now, now they are little more than a fractured, broken mess.

And he's not just talking about the guns. No. It's not just the guns Sawyer has taken.

But as he nods in her general direction, he'll pretend it is. He'll just pretend it is.

_- (change scene) -_

Sawyer stands guard, a solitary sentinel, sitting there, lounging, legs spread out in front of him, rifle laid across his lap.

He watches them all. He watches them try to watch him without him noticing. He decides that they're not very good at it.

He spots her from far off. Kate. Making her way, slowly, across the beach. Arms swinging steady at her side.

He remembers their odd, almost awkward attempt at rehabilitation and physical therapy. He remembers. How her arms swept over the length of his shoulder down to his elbow, and he had to wonder why she only touches him like this in public, out in the open for everyone to see, under the pretense of good health and healing, never passion and desire. But he could feel it. Thrumming under her fingertips as they wound their way up and almost to his collarbone.

He bets that steady beating has faded to almost nothing these past five days. And it might have been what he wanted. He just wonders why it doesn't feel quite as satisfying as he once imagined it to be.

He shakes his head, imperceptibly, to himself. That's a lie. He likes it. He _likes_ it. He needs it.

As she nears, she doesn't even acknowledge him. And he can't ever let things be, let them go at that.

"What, Freckles? We ain't friends anymore?"

She freezes, turns slowly and shuffles her feet towards him, head still held high, her feet barely moving.

"Were we ever?" She is unreadable, unreadable, and he doesn't know what to make of it. Yes, he does. Yes. He does.

"Good point, sweet cheeks."

She inhales sharply, quickly, and it's enough, it's enough for him to feed off of and run with.

She looks back down at him, the sun glowing behind her head, tiny curls rustling in the wind, escaped from the loose ponytail at the nape of her neck.

Push and pull, he thinks. Push and pull.

"Why'd you do it, Sawyer?"

"Hmm? Do what, doll?"

"The guns, Sawyer. Why'd you have to take the guns?"

He wonders what it will take to get her to drop this, once and for all.

"Darlin', I thought we hashed this one out the night of. You wanna discuss again, I guess I'm game."

"Then answer me. And don't give me that rehearsed bullshit about the art of the con or that you're pissed about the beer, or whatever your point was exactly. I want to hear the truth."

He wants to tell her that truth doesn't matter if no one wants to believe in it. He wants to tell her the truth doesn't matter if the storyteller chooses to ignore it.

He wants to tell her a lot of things. But none of them seem to come.

"You really beat all, Freckles. Alright then, how 'bout this one for size? Keepin' them guns in either one of their hands, Locke's or Jack's, was like waiting for a goddamn civil war to ignite. You want the Dalai Lama sitting on a pile of ammunition, letting holy hell rip through here and him just sittin' there, letting it pass, waxing on about peace and civil disobedience and 'I have a dream?' Or how 'bout your vigilante cowboy there, just itchin' for a high noon showdown against any poor son of a bitch that's got the balls to argue with him? Or every time we get a little scared or a fucking twig snaps in the heart of the jungle, he's firing up the militia and putting guns back in the hands of Quick Draw Sanchez and old Osama bin Laden."

"So that makes you our compassionate leader now?"

"Hell no. You can't lead people that don't want to be led, Kate. Rule number one, right there. I ain't tryin' to be General Patton over here."

"Then what are you in all of this?"

"I…I'm your objective third party. I don't give a damn who gets shot or who dies, who disappears, who, what, when, where or why. Don't give a damn. All I care about is what you got to give me to get your grubby paws on my pistol."

She just stares, and maybe he is imagining it, but he can almost see the pity in her steady gaze. He doesn't like it.

"I don't believe you."

And he bends forward, elbows on his knees, head keened to the side.

"No? Damn shame then, 'cause it's the truth."

"Are you that good at lying, Sawyer, that you have finally started believing it all yourself?"

He laughs quietly, more to himself than to her. "Had you goin' there for a little while there too, didn't I? Guess that makes both of us fools then, huh?"

He leans back, hands behind his head. "If that'll be all…you're blockin' my sunshine, Freckles."

She turns to leave, takes a step or two, and then seems to think better of it. And she's there, a couple of feet away, voice cold and soft.

"I think you were scared. I think for once your act was starting to slip and the real man was coming out from behind the mask. And heaven forbid that _Sawyer_ feel anything real or mean anything real to someone else. So you proved your might and did your best to makes us all hate you again. All because you were afraid."

He closes his eyes, settling his head against the back of the seat, the heat of the afternoon sun peeking out from behind a cloud warming his face.

"If that's the lie you're chosin' to believe…so be it. So be it."

* * *

_I'll subtract pain by ounces  
__Yeah, I will start painting houses  
__If things come alive_

* * *

Of the four of them, Jack is the only one without a criminal record and a body count to his name.

He has seen death. He has seen it in that up-close, microscopic, analytical light of an operating room, a light so bright it blinds a man from the emotions of the situation. He has seen death in the waiting room, on the faces of those left behind. Hell, he's felt like the angel of death himself, walking down the hallway, slow, almost as though he were heading off to an execution all his own. Yes, he's seen the dead, and yes, he's felt their pulse slip away.

It was never his fault.

Jack is a man of action. There is always a plan, outlined step by step in the back of his mind.

And there is always someone there to save.

Maybe that's why he won't challenge Locke when it comes to the hatch, to the button. He likes the idea that they, that _he_, is saving six billion people every hour and forty-eight minutes, whether it's the truth or not.

Kate thought about it for a week. She thought about it and weighed her options. Guns were too noisy and she didn't want to watch his brains, his blood, his excuse for a heart explode like smashed tomatoes on an empty stage in front of her. She didn't trust poison. She didn't want to have to wait around to see if it had done its trick. Stabbing was too messy and smothering involved touching his pillow, his bed, his head.

She decided he should go out with a bang. Take the house with him. Give her mom some cash and destroy the setting for a farce too despicable for words.

All little boys like to play with guns, and Sawyer, he was really no different. Only he played the game with a ruthless vengeance none of the boys on the playground seemed to share. See, those boys. They thought you yelled bang and the bad guy fell down dead. And that was it. Simple, neat and tidy. Point your finger and down they'll fall. But Sawyer, he knew the bang was more of a boom and it sounds like the world might have just imploded, and they don't just fall down dead. They fall apart and their insides slips away and across the floor, red, red, red.

He knew at the age of eight he wanted to see the red. He wanted to see the red of Mr. Sawyer. He wanted to make him pay. Recess was target practice and life was just a training ground, an education for when that moment came to pull the trigger and watch it all disappear.

Ana knew she was going to kill that fucker the moment her husband had packed his suitcase and had told her, calm, with wavering eye contact, that he was going to go stay at the Flamingo Inn for the night. They didn't say good-bye. And she didn't tell herself she was going to kill him, the man that had shot her. She knew, she knew the truth and there was really no reason to announce any of it all.

Jack doesn't kill. Jack redeems. He saves. He'll catch you as you fall, catch you by the collar and reel you back in, pull you back from the brink. And if you happen to slip, if his hands are too slick, too shaky, too small, and down and down and rock bottom you hit, you can't blame him. No. You can't blame him.

* * *

**

* * *

**

**act II**

_I promise to commit no acts of violence  
__Either physical or otherwise  
__If things come alive  
__I'll say it now_

_Cause I want it now_

* * *

Lazy days, a bit like summer, stretch before them all. It doesn't matter if it is morning, noon or night. There are no traffic schedules or nine to five workdays to abide by. It is just the day, and the night and all the empty time in between.

Sawyer imagines that this how cats live. Always on guard, yet spending the majority of the day, curled up in a ball in front of a window, warming in the sun.

Just as sleep is about to claim him, a shadow falls across his chest. Cracking one eye open, he looks up, and all he can think is deja-vu. Deja-fucking-vu.

There's Kate, her warrior stance, hands on hips and head held just a little too high to be taken completely seriously.

"Darlin', I was just about to catch some shut eye. What is it that you want now?" His last words catch on a yawn, a genuine one at that, and his mouth lolls open and he relishes in his overly dramatic performance.

"I was just checking to make sure you were still alive out here. You're really taking this outlaw thing to heart, aren't you." And it's not a question because that might cost too much emotion on Kate's part and Sawyer understands this. What he doesn't understand is why she is here, on his turf, without what one might call a game plan.

"Your day that empty and boring you had to come down here and harass me some more, Sassafras?"

Her nostrils flare and she chuckles once, once without opening her mouth, once without letting the humor reach her face.

"Jack and I are going to head out in the jungle in a bit." She gazes back in the direction of their camp, maybe looking for Jack, maybe looking for a distraction.

"Hmm, well, boy howdy, was that an invitation to join the jungle boogie? Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but ménage-a-trois ain't really my thing. Well, unless it's the male species that's outnumbered, and don't really sound like that'll be the case this venture out." He plasters on his best smile, the one that always managed to get him what he wanted. That slight leer coated over with charisma and blatant sex appeal.

He won't admit that he likes that she doesn't buy it. No. No. It makes him angry. Yes. That's it.

"You're disgusting, Sawyer. And, no, it's not an invitation. I'm just…"

"Letting me know you and Doc are headed out into the forbidden forest? Alone? Off lookin' for a little love shack? Might want to ask Sun and Jin. Pretty damn sure they've been up to the horizontal tango. Hell, ask Bernard. Betcha he got a little action after fifty days pining for his wife." He bets he should have stopped long before this conversation really got rolling. But Sawyer always liked to bet against the house. Even though he rarely ever won.

"Is that really all you think about? Sex?" It might just be the way that the sun is playing off her hair and the way the sweat is dripping off her nose. It might be the freckles or it be her posture, her voice, her glare. Doesn't matter. Either way, she doesn't look half as pissed off as she is playing to be.

"Sugar, that's all any man thinks about. Sex. And food. And here on Gilligan's Island, staying alive is up there too. We all been doin' pretty well covering two of the three criteria. Guess we all just been savin' the best for last."

She doesn't say anything. She just slowly turns and starts to walk away.

Sawyer decides in that handful of seconds that he isn't done. He isn't done if she is leaving him for some jungle trek with the good doctor. Not yet. The air isn't thick enough for his tastes.

"What color you think Jackie-boy's lab coat was down at the hospital?" He calls out to her and watches her back go rigid and her entire body freeze in place.

"What? I don't know... What kind of question is that? White, I guess." Curious irritation, those are the words to describe the look on her face.

He smiles, calm and Cheshire-cat-like. "And what color you think his daddy's coat was? White?"

"What are you getting at here, Sawyer?" But her eyes tell him that she already knows the answer. And he kind of likes that. No, he really likes that.

"What color collar your daddy wear, Kate? Hmm? Guessin' blue, I'm guessin' truck stop blue with a little motor oil and stale whiskey. I right?"

"You seem rather familiar with it yourself." Her tone is acidic and doesn't quite match the sad resignation falling from her eyes.

"Yeah. But I ain't the one pretending otherwise, now am I?"

"You're –" She's moving forward and he can hear the barrage of insults and names that are about to be sent his way. Empty, empty, empty, waste of time.

"What? What am I, sweetheart? Dirt? Scum? Yes ma'am, duly noted. I am absolute shit. At least I own up to it."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Means, baby, I ain't masquerading around under some self-righteous tirade. Means I know I'm the bottom of the motherfucking rung and I really don't give a damn. Wanna berate me a little bit more over that one?

I'll pretend I'm listening."

And she leaves him. She leaves him alone on his tiny strip of land, the outskirts of their island town.

He breathes in deep. And lets it out slow.

We all lie and say that we're fenced in to keep them safe and we'll roar a little louder to make our case just a little bit clearer.

_- (change scene) -_

"There are polar bears on this island?"

"What?" Jack drops the bag he is carrying and turns to look at Ana, sitting there in the glow of the fire, poking a stick into the embers.

"I was talking to that guy, Hurley, and he mentioned something about polar bears. I didn't ask. He acted like I should already know or something."

She finally looks up at him and Jack wonders how much sleep she has actually gotten these fifty-odd days.

He takes a seat, exhaling heavily. "Yeah. I think we've seen two of them now."

She nods, a more mechanical than thought-provoked action.

"I saw polar bears once. I was, like, thirteen, and my ma decided the whole family should go on a trip to San Diego and see the zoo. And, man, I was thirteen. I didn't give a shit about the animals or the family bonding. But we got there, and my brother, he was so excited to see those damn bears. And there they were, in fucking San Diego, enclosed in this pit thing, all ice and cold and shit. And there were two of them, right? Only they each stayed on their own side, each bear, curled up in their own little cave, as far apart as possible. And my brother, he was, I don't know, like eight, and he asked my ma why the mommy and the daddy bears had to stay so far apart. And she looked so damn sad. And then she said, and I never forgot this, just because you love someone it doesn't mean you like them." She chuckles a little.

"I don't know why the hell I remembered that right now."

The logs begin to sizzle as the first drops of rain fall from the sky.

_- (change scene) -_

Where there once had been scorching sun, the sky is now little more than ominous gray cloud cover.

The rain continues to trickle down, seemingly lazy in its lack of effort, or rather, saving its strength for later.

"What did you do, Kate?"

"What?" She looks genuinely puzzled, and he honestly can't figure out why. She had to know this moment was on its way. The first time he declined to hear her out. The second, she had turned and walked the other way.

Jack likes to think in uncomplicated adages. So he'll tell you that the third time is the charm.

He watched her slip that fucking airplane in her back pocket. He has seen her, alone, sad, aloof, looking at that thing they way he once looked at his wedding band.

"What did you do? Why were you on the run? Why were you arrested? Why did the marshal call you dangerous? I think these are all pretty legitimate questions."

He watches her pause, raise her chin, and stare at him.

"I killed my father."

And suddenly Jack is in a hospital conference room, taking his father down in front of his colleagues, his inferiors. And he smiles, a slow, sad, rueful excuse for a smile.

"I imagine sooner or later we are all guilty of that crime."

She doesn't smile, or even waver. She just stands there, strangely proud before the jury, the judge, the executioner.

"No, Jack. I killed him." It should upset him the plain way she states it, devoid of remorse or even emotion. She just lays it out there. Yes, Kate killed a man, and yes, he was her father.

And he has to ask. Jesus, he just has to know.

"Was…the airplane…was it his?"

She smiles a little, roguish, and he thinks of little children keeping secrets and hiding themselves in toy houses, playing hide and seek, playing pretend, acting like possessing secrets and scandals is the best afternoon activity by far.

"Of course not."

He'd say that he's relieved, but the air is still too tense.

"So, there was another man then?"

She smiles again, a dirty little secret he doesn't want to know.

"Jack. There is always another man."

* * *

_When personality is scar tissue  
__We travel south with this use  
__I'm subtle like a lion's cage  
__Such a cautious display_

_Remember, take hold of your time here  
__Give some meanings to the means  
__To your end_

_Not even jail_

* * *

Sawyer is the only one out of four without holy matrimony in his past. He never stuck around long enough to let the idea foster and grow in a woman's head. In and out, in more ways than one: his simplistic M.O. 

Kate got married in Vegas. It was silly. And stupid. And a part of her chalks it up to alcohol. And the other, to pain.

She got a phone call that morning. Tom had just gotten engaged. And he wanted her to come to the wedding. He wanted her to come there early, meet his wife-to-be, dine and wine with the wedding party and all that trite ceremonial bullshit.

She was twenty-one. And it hurt. And, yes, she was seeing someone all her own, she was seeing him without ever truly noticing him. When she'd roll over in the night, feel the heat of another next to her, it was Tom. It was Tom. God, it was always Tom. And as she listened over the phone, as she saw him being dragged farther and farther out of her reach, she fell apart a little, flew them, that nameless man and herself, both out to Vegas, downed five shots of tequila in a row and got married in the least tacky wedding chapel she could find in her intoxicated haze.

They annulled it. Romance dead on arrival. She never saw him after that. And eight months later she killed Wayne. She'd call it a bad year if the ones to follow had been any better. They hadn't, and in her mind, late at night, cold and alone, she sometimes blames him. Tom.

If she ever springs for a second marriage, she's walking herself down the aisle. Alone.

Jack's wedding was the kind of affair that little girls dream about without even understanding the purpose or reasoning behind the pomp and circumstance. It was the kind, had their names been famous enough, that finds its way onto the pages of celebrity magazines.

It was storybook. He was the hero, the prince, the hard-working man come to save his faltering princess. She, a broken damsel in distress, letting her hair down, searching for her glass slipper, poisoned apple running down her chin.

He guesses he should have read the epilogue a little closer. He doesn't remember anything about divorce lawyers and dividing the assets.

The same priest that taught Ana the Ten Commandments married her to Robert. The rice had gotten caught in her black curls. The heat was record-breaking, that last weekend of October. The crowd had cheered, a deafening cacophony of Spanish and English alike.

It was simple. It was what she had imagined. They had the white photo album with the wedding bells on the front chronicling their day of wedded bliss.

She remembers though, thinking of those Ten Commandments and how she herself never really measured up.

Self-doubt. She wonders if that's a sin. Doesn't matter. The honeymoon ended in a blaze of armed robbery and a couple quick shots to her gut. They never got to fill the baby album.

Sawyer remembers wandering the island, that strange struggle just to move, to put one foot in front of the other after he crawled ashore with Michael in tow.

He had to get back. He knew that much. He had to get back and just see, see if she was still there. Last he had left her, she had been on yet another crusade into the heart of darkness, out looking for dynamite or the fountain of youth or some such shit, and he just had to see if she had found it, if it had blown up in her pretty face and she was just another marker in a sticks and stones cemetery or if she was fine, sitting pretty with the doc and cracking coconuts and sharing stories of the past. He just had to see. He had to see if she was there and if she was breathing and if she still wrinkled her nose when she didn't like the situation and if her heart was still beating and if her breath still quickened every time he'd slip and touch her, every damn time and if her heart, her heart, if her heart...

He just wanted to check. He didn't give a damn one way or the other. He just knew that the curiosity of it all would get him in the end if he never knew.

And as he walked, the leaves whispering, whispering a strange melody with death as the heavy tempo, he could think of only one word, one word as he imagined fireworks and explosions and a disjointed medley of waterfalls and climbing trees, one word: commitment.

And as he sloshed the word around soundlessly in his mouth, letting the taste of it eat away in the hollows of his cheek, he thought how it tasted a bit like stale whiskey and feared the accompanying burn if he dared to swallow.

He can't remember what happened next. He just remembers the ground meeting his knees and how the group had seemed to double, yet they all looked the same, wavering in front of him.

And as it all began to dim, as it all went black, he saw her face, laughing, mocking and impertinent.

"I guess you'll never know…"

And the whisper of the trees sounded so much like her, so much like Kate, and he didn't even have to ask what she could possibly mean.

And then it all, it disappeared.

* * *

**act III**

_We marshal in the days of longing  
__We tremble like aimless children  
__And wait to watch the fire_

* * *

"You love the smell of napalm in the morning too, Doc?" 

Heavy clouds hang over the beach, strangely empty, as eight o'clock creeps along the horizon. Jack stands there, turning to find Sawyer ambling over.

"What?" he asks, not needing the repetition, but not really feeling up to the task of answering the meaningless question.

"You standing out here, lookin' a little _Apocalypse Now_-like. Just wonderin' who you planning on bombing the shit out of, general."

He doesn't answer. It wasn't a real question. And if he waits long enough, waits long enough for the clouds to fill all the way up and for the sun to disappear entirely, he knows that Sawyer will finally be gone.

He exhales.

He knows he has been overthrown. That still doesn't explain why they all continue to defer to him in their hour, minute, second of need. He still has to dress their wounds and listen as they all wax on, praying he will prescribe the Prozac their island pharmacy doesn't even carry.

Bedside manner. All in the name of bedside fucking manner led him to a set of bunk beds for him to kneel before to listen to the amorous declarations from a man that has become the tangible embodiment of the word enemy for Jack.

When he sees her, she isn't the same. He just sees Sawyer, lying there, lingering somewhere between life and death, breathing and falling, sleeping and waking and whispering "I love her…I love her."

He wonders how long he has been ignoring this. He imagines since that morning, that morning where Sawyer lay there, whispering of love. Love.

Jack blames it on the drugs.

When he turns around, he finds that he's alone.

A fat rain drop trickles its way down the back of his shirt. And then it starts to pour.

_- (change scene) - _

"Why do you bother?"

"I'm sorry?" Kate swipes a piece of sweat-soaked hair off her forehead. Ana stands before her, hands on her hips, and Kate quickly realizes this is the first time the two of them have had a conversation alone. Unsupervised.

"I said, why do you bother? With him." She jerks her head towards Sawyer's solitary tent. "What's the point? He's a bastard. And we all know it. So why do you bother?"

Kate squints into the sky, the sun hiding behind the clouds, rain falling heavy and gazes down the beach, catching hold of Jack, alone, in her narrow line of sight.

"Same reason Jack bothers with either one of us."

_- (change scene) - _

She wishes she could call one of them stoic. But Jack feeds off emotion like a starving soul and Sawyer enjoys the blinding pain of passion a little bit too much.

Kate doesn't want to be their metronome, ticking out a beat, a rhythm, a pulse as the one or the other stamps a frenzy of messy circles all around her aching head.

She drums her fingers on the tabletop before her, waiting for twenty-two minutes and forty eight seconds to pass so she can enter the code and have 108 more minutes to herself.

She hears the thunder crack and wonders if the storm is in full swing now.

She hears the squeak of wet shoes on hard floor but doesn't bother to look. Slow, slow, oddly patient, an offbeat rhythm.

There is a distant clap of thunder.

The echoing of footsteps has slipped into a soft shuffle, the scuffle of shoes along the floor, coming ever closer.

"Well, well, well…" Sawyer, holding a book half-open, pausing in the doorway, hand on hip. "Let's see here… 'On a dark and stormy night…' you know how the rest of the story goes, Freckles?"

She locks up, dark curls falling across her face half obscuring him from view.

The room feels too small. Like an elevator. She feels as though she is trapped in an elevator, trapped between floors and tinny, tiny music echoing in her ears, praying the doors to open and the cables to hold their weight.

More thunder. She wishes she could see the lightning.

"Please, leave." She never has been able to pull off authoritative or demanding. She can never find a way to keep her face completely blank and devoid of emotion. She never could stop that slight tremble in her voice or the panicked edge at the end of her words.

Deer in the headlights. She has spent her entire life a deer in the headlights walking down the middle of a dark street waiting for a car to come speeding around the bend.

She never really considered the possibility of the hunter shooting her dead.

He swaggers forward and if they were anywhere else in the world, she would wonder if he was drunk. The boneless nature of his legs, the slightly lolling head. Smashed. She wants to call him smashed, she thinks.

"You and me, sugar –"

Cold, cold, numb. She feels ice, cold, awakened, at the sound of his words. You and me. You and me and me and you and us, together. You and me.

No. You can't add those two up. The answer is simply unimaginable.

And there he is, all smarm and charm, and no, she doesn't and no, she can't find anything about this desirable. No. No. She _can't_.

She rises from her chair quickly, the chair skidding noisily, angrily across the floor in detached, metallic scraping.

"You and me nothing! There is nothing here, Sawyer. Nothing!" She watches him try to start again, to speak, but she holds up a hand and keeps going. "Don't you get it? God, I am so sick of this. Just stop…stop trying to make this something it's not."

She stills for a second, her pulse racing. He just stands there, eying her, curiously. And she speaks, softer now. "Yes, yes, there was an attraction here. Yes, I wanted you and you wanted me and you had to go and ruin _everything_. Are you happy? Because now, now there is _nothing_ here for either one of us!"

He shuffles forward, and no, he isn't leering. No. It's something else. "Nothing? There's nothing here?" One step closer, she slides two steps back, an odd pulse all their own. She feels the corner of the table dig into her hip. And freezes. "Then why you backin' away, Freckles? Why you look at me every goddamn chance you get?" Inches closer and closer, closing the distance, leaning in, leaning, hovering above her, closer, and closer.

She is out of breath and this is stupid. She hates this man. She hates him. He has disappointment etched into every line of his face and coated on every slip of the tongue. This is stupid. This is stupid and it has to stop.

Tentatively, she places a hand on his chest, a weak attempt to push him back.

"No, Sawyer. No. Stop it…I don't want it. I don't want you. I don't want you. I don't…want you. I don't want you I don't I don't…want you…want you…I…" Her babbling ceases for the barest of seconds with the catch of a breath as he grips her shoulder, and she finds it odd that she likes the fact the entire palm of his hand can cup the expanse of her bare shoulder. "…want you…"

He chuckles softly, winding a stray piece of her hair, lips a breath away. "I know. I know…

And I wish I could stop it too…"

He kisses her. Softer than she had expected. He kisses her and she wonders when, in the last thirty seconds, the last fifty days, they came to this.

She arches her back, her entire torso pressing into his, and, Jesus, this is stupid. So stupid, so fucking stupid. She is going to burn for this one. And the virile aggression returns, as he nicks her lips with blunt teeth and grips her arms, her hips, her ass, with enough force to leave reminders for days to come.

And she is dizzy, dizzy spinning twirling binding breaking tanking turning (breaking in half).

She grips him by the front of his t-shirt, white-knuckled, and she doesn't know if this is fear or if it's passion. And there's a ringing in her ears, a ringing that strikes her as strangely melodic, sweeping her further into this mess.

And maybe a record began, of its own accord, the needle willing its way down and down to meet the waiting song. But she can hear a melody floating through her head, a tinkling piano slowly, slowly crescendoing into something more. And as he kisses her and her mouth opens and their tongues meet, she wonders if this is real, as real as the horse that nuzzled her palm, as real as the feel of his thick white bandage under her skating fingers. Or maybe it's just a dream, an all too real hallucination that will lead her to waking in a few short hours, breathless, alone and cold.

But it's real and it's real, the invisible, inaudible rhythm plays out in her head. This is real and he is real and this is really happening.

He grips her by the back of the neck, and raises her to sit on the tabletop, the whirring of machinery all around them. And as he lifts her tank top over her head, she wants to ask if, really, are they going to do this here? Right here, with the end of time counting down, in front of the face of doom.

She feels his cool skin against her own, hot on cold, tan on pale, rough on soft. Opposites, opposites, opposites attract.

She lounges there on the cool metal table in nothing more than her black panties, chest rising, falling, rising, falling and she has had sex before, she shouldn't be this terrified.

He drops his jeans, and normally, normally, she would roll her eyes and laugh at the fact the man doesn't believe in underwear, but here she just lies in wait, goosebumps rising on her skin, the table hard against her tailbone.

And he comes closer, and she realizes they haven't said a word since he kissed her. No, just breathy pants and the occasional muffled groan, and the music, the music in her head, and the hum of archaic technology. His hands are on her hips, his teeth are on her neck, sucking, hurting, and with a gasp she is completely bare and wondering how she will ever hide the evidence.

He finally looks at her. And she wonders if this is what he had planned from the moment he walked across the beach, the jungle and this very room. He looks at her and she looks back, he enters, hard, fast, and stills, and suddenly, she can't hear a thing.

He starts to thrust, and she grips him tight. This is real and they are real and it really doesn't matter what she thinks about it.

Not now.

The thunder applauds in approval and the rain tinkles down like old keys on a piano.

_- (change scene) -_

"How's the fish?" Jack watches as Ana-Lucia grimaces and swallows.

"I'd definitely choose Red Lobster over this crap." He laughs softly, and oddly feels slightly relieved when she joins in.

Silence stretches across the night for several minutes. He can hear her stirring next to him, and twists his head towards her.

"Why do you care about her so much?" She whispers the question, looking straight ahead.

"What…I…who?" Caught off guard doesn't even begin to describe Jack. And he knows. He knows what she's asking, about whom, but right now, right now, he'd rather pretend otherwise.

"Kate. Why do you care so much about her?"

He could call it a good question if he dares himself to think too hard on the matter. He doesn't. And instead answer what first comes to mind.

"I…I don't really know. I mean, I guess I barely know her, when it all comes down to it. But have you ever felt…I don't know, a companionship with someone, and you can only hope that it might be something real?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I have."

* * *

_And airing on the side of caution  
__Betraying all the symptoms  
__But girl you shake it right_

* * *

Kate seems to be the only one graced with a prior possession of real love. She might be the only one of their quartet that has indeed loved and lost. Jack had merely found a miracle, an anomaly, and had to call her his own, had to claim her, not out of desire or even affection, but rather desperation, a desperation to instill a sense of belief in a life of cold fact and Latin diagnoses. His wedding ring now sits in a crowded sock drawer, alone among the tightly rolled white socks and the rare, mismatched ones, stuck without a mate. 

Ana-Lucia had a husband. And she called it love when maybe it should have been routine. She realized it was something less on the morning after he learned she lost their baby. She lost him too, just as effortlessly, just as painfully, and lost the disguise her desire for a family had worn maybe a little too well. Love, feigned love, fake marital bliss.

Sawyer doesn't speak of love. In his book, it cheats you. Of your money, your sanity, your free will. And occasionally your life. He knows lust and desire slightly better. And with a slight smirk and ever deepening dimples, he'll tell you how he'd like to get to know them a little bit more.

Kate fell in love when she was twelve. It might have been even earlier, but she finally recognized it for what it was at that still childish, slightly tomboy-esque age. They used to play house as children, he the father and she the mother, and as she grew a little older, she liked to look back and imagine it was merely a rehearsal for the real thing.

She knows what it means to love. She knows how it hurts, how it hurts so fucking bad when the years pass and the features of a familiar face fade into a shadowy caricature. If she tries hard enough, she can remember. But the eyes have lines that crinkle at the edges; stubble has grown in on his always clean-shaven jaw. His voice is something different, something slow and of a different breed. She would call him unrecognizable. But she knows he has merely become someone else, someone else to pine for, to ache for.

She has someone else to fall for. She has someone else to love now.

* * *

**act IV**

_I will bounce you on the lap of silence  
__We will free love to the beats of science  
__And girl, you shake it right_

_I'll say it now_

* * *

The thunder ceased as dawn came into view, but the rain marches to a beat and timetable all its own. Relentless, warm rain, adding to the already humid heat of the morning. 

"Christ Almighty, we've opened up Pandora's box of sexual frustration." He smiles into her mouth as she pulls at the zipper, her hair falling in both their eyes.

She thought she would have been more fulfilled after. She thought she would finally have stopped the itch and everything could go back to some strange semblance of normal. Instead, she felt a kind of restlessness, a mounting desperation she couldn't quite explain and rather than calm and appeased she felt anxious and afraid.

"Just. Shut. Up." She grits out, his hands in her pants, her hand clutching his neck, his chest, anywhere that feels right.

His heart beats, a little too quickly, and motherfucker, this is just sex. Just sex.

She arches into him, and it's not the same as the hatch, not the same at all, it's missing something, everything, and Sawyer, Sawyer likes it when shit hits the fan. He calls that his reasoning, his lack of logic.

"You don't need me, sugar puss. You got Jack." He says each word like you would stab an ice pick, his slow, southern drawl doing nothing to warm each individual sound.

She cocks her head to the left, buttons the top button on her jeans and re-adjusts her top, unnecessarily smoothing the fabric out across her stomach.

"And you have your right hand."

He imagines if she was used to this sort of thing, juggling men and dropping blue balls, she would flip her hair over her shoulder, maybe wink, and at the very least smirk before sauntering away.

She doesn't. And as his heart refuses to slow, and in the name of familiarity and disconnection, he kind of wished she had.

_- (change scene) -_

Ana-Lucia hasn't gotten laid in over a year. She was never very good at the one-night stand and never possessed a desire to improve the skill.

She doesn't know how they came to this though. Her and Jack. To put it simply, he is the most solid man she has met in years and she likes that she can look into his eyes and for just a minute, be judgment free.

She isn't sure if they call that kind of thought love. She kind of hopes they don't.

But she kissed him. Jack. On impulse. He just looked so sad and bored and a part of her thought that maybe, maybe she could make him feel a little better.

Ana may be a cop, a killer, but she's still a woman. A woman, still.

"Hey, hey…don't you think this is a little…" His breath hitches as his arm sweeps up and over her bare back under her shirt. "…risky?"

"What?"

"I mean…we've already had one baby on the island…I really don't think we need to add another."

She laughs a little. And goes back to kissing him, he returning the gesture lackadaisically, unfocused. "I can't have any anyway."

"What?" And she can feel the pity, rolling off him in waves and she has to look away, up and over his head and out into the wild.

She rises off of him, and looks down, where he sits, confused and far too empathetic.

Ana feels like a bullfighter, standing there in the center ring, yelling "Toro! Toro!" at the top of her lungs, waving a red cape she strangely feels is paling to a shade of white, all the while praying, praying, silent, she doesn't wake up dead. And there's Jack, bucking back and forth, circling the ring in jerky, awkward movements, desperate to stay far, far from her. And heading off, across the ring.

"It doesn't really matter." She can't look at him, Jesus, she can't look.

"Wait…don't you want to talk about this?"

"No, Jack. I don't want to _talk_." And the last word says it all for her.

"Why…why does everything have to be about sex around here?"

"Because we're fucking animals, Jack."

She leaves the cave behind her and retreats into the jungle. She hopes she spots a polar bear along her way.

_- (change scene) - _

Yes, Sawyer likes it when shit hits the fan. And as he stands there, staring at Jack, he knows that's what they are all approaching.

Kate stands there next to Jack, cheeks flushed and the strangest look of shame glowing in her eyes. Yes, Jack is the one she idolizes and one day would like to emulate. But he, Sawyer, hell, he'll take her as she is right now.

No. He doesn't mean that.

But if he can't hold onto to her, he sure as hell isn't going to watch as Dr. Jack takes her as his own.

Ana hovers in her own corner, not a referee, or solely a spectator. Just there.

He knows Jack imagines himself with Kate. And he has to set the record straight.

"What you gonna tell the children, Hoss? This picture here, this your mama when she was in jail? For murder? You gonna tell them that one? Looks good for a mug shot, don't it? Or better yet, yeah, kids, your mama's on the run from the feds, so hope you don't mind that we gonna switch schools every couple months, along with goddamn towns and counties and maybe a license plate or two. How that picture workin' out for you, Doc? A nice little portrait of suburban bliss for the doctor and his fugitive of a wife?"

Sawyer remembers the story of Othello. Fuck a man up enough with jealousy and ire and he'll slit his own damn throat for you. And he himself may swing from the gallows, but not until old Jack meets the other side. Too bad the Bard never clarified which son of a bitch gets the girl.

"Sawyer, please, stop it –" Kate's there, bewildered and anxious. And refusing to look his way.

"No, no, Kate. Let's hear what he has to say. And, tell me, Sawyer, what kind of future are you exactly envisioning for the two of you?"

He turns to Kate and away from Jack. He tries to hold her gaze steady, but hers wavers and flickers and wanders about the dank cellar in the hatch.

"Tramps like us… baby, we were born to run."

And she just stares at him and distantly wonders what this is all about. Bipolar, yes she will call him bipolar. He wants her only when he can't have her, but when she, when she is the one reaching out towards him he'll slap her hand away.

They seem to have done everything wrong, no sense of chronology or neat, organized timeline. They hate and they avoid, they fight and they lie, they fuck and they try.

They lie. She'll bet you the most important part is that. They lie.

But she knows. She probably fell in love with him the second she saw him. All sand and height and total, absolute fear. A lone cigarette on a beach wracked with little more than death and destruction. Or maybe it was the other, yes, it should be the other, counting to five as she stitched along with time into the planes of his back, wondering how it is ever possible to bottle the panic up and lay it out in simple steps. No. It was the look in his eyes, his fucking eyes, as he handed her the gun, all feral intensity, and she thought of Little Red Riding Hood, and, my, what big teeth you have. She loved him. No, that can't be right. She loved the man who crawled from the caves covered in dirt and grime and something vaguely heroic, alive, alive, alive. She fell in love with a man who was little more than a boy, holding grudges tight like a dangerous lover, romancing the pain, yet knowing, ultimately, in the end, he'll be the one holding the dagger as it all falls down. She fell in love. And, God, it fucking hurts.

She fell and she fell and she fell. And the man she loved, loves, _loves_, doesn't try to help her up from on high above. No. He's already down there when she hits the ground, a cocky-ass grin and battle scars to boot.

She was supposed to love a doctor and let him heal her pain. She was supposed to love Tom but she let him get away. She was supposed to do a lot of things, but somehow she found herself here.

She knows two wrongs won't make a right. But she also knows a right and a wrong won't add up to a hell of a lot more.

"None of you even know what you are talking about," she whispers, and turns and walks away.

We all lie and say that we're not scared, while loving all the more the echoing click of a lock moving in place, the clink of a key thrown far out of reach.

* * *

_Oh, but all this to learn and your hair's so free  
__Can't you feel all the warmth of my sincerity?  
__You make motion when you cry  
__You're making peoples lives feel less private  
__Don't take time away_

_You need motion when you cry_

* * *

Ana-Lucia is the sole one without daddy issues on her resume. La familia. It was always there in its compound, nuclear unit. A mom. A dad. A brother. A sister. They never had a dog, but she had never really wished for one. 

Kate remembers that day as though it were yesterday. Her father, her father, the army man, the good old boy, had promised they would go to Disneyland. He had sworn, up and down and right and left, they would go there. He, her mother, and herself. She woke up that morning, it was a Tuesday, and had put on her Minnie Mouse t-shirt and matching socks and had bounded down the stairs with a joy Christmas Day can ever only seem to generate.

Her mom was in the kitchen. In her red robe with the ripped pocket gum wrappers always slipped out of. Her mom was in the kitchen, holding a pot of coffee and a cracked blue mug in hand. Just standing there. Not moving or pouring or switching her wrist to swirl the coffee around the bottom of the pot. Her shoulders hunched and she placed the pot on the countertop.

"I'm sorry, Button. Daddy had to work."

Sawyer lived with his uncle for a while. A hard drinking, hardly working son of a bitch. He had remembered the man from Thanksgivings and birthday parties of the past. His daddy's younger brother, the funny one, the ladies man.

From far away, he resembled his father. The same confident stride, the seemingly over-inflated chest, the "well, I'll be damned" expression on his face.

Up close, he was a disappointing mess. An inebriated smile and glazed eyes, a patchy half-grown beard and heady whiskey breath. Sawyer discovered the extent of disenchantment the night he forgot to put his toy trucks away and Uncle taught him the meaning of "discipline."

Clammy hands. Jack remembers the clammy hands of sitting in that formal meeting room, his father sitting calm and steady across from him. He was wearing one of his better suits and clutching a coffee cup as though the caffeine might be enough to save him.

It wasn't. And as he rolled the indictment his father's way, he just wondered, wondered with sweat beading down his back, why his father, _his_ father couldn't be a better man.

Ana didn't know she was pregnant. She didn't know that she had been pregnant for two weeks until the cloud of anesthesia wore off and the doctor was standing above her, swimming in her strangely blurry vision, telling her that he was sorry, the baby didn't make it. And all she could croak out was "what baby?"

For two weeks, two weeks, she had a baby growing inside of her and didn't have the slightest idea. She wonders what kind of maternal instinct that is.

Her first day out of the hospital, the bracelet still on her wrist, she went down to the closest drug store, across the street and one block down, and bought a pregnancy test. It was out of order, a mismatched chronology, but comfort strangely echoed in the disconnected timeline.

The thin blue line appeared. Negative. Negative.

She stood there, in the bathroom in the apartment she shared with her husband. She thought about nurseries and day care and rattles and family photo albums.

Ana cried. And for the first and the last time mourned the loss of a child that had been both his and hers. Ana cried and mourned the loss of the things she wanted but could never have.

* * *

**act V**

_We all hold hands  
__Can we all hold hands,  
__When we make new friends?_

* * *

"Um, dude? Chopping wood? Again?" 

Jack slams the axe down, enjoying the sharp crack and the splintering of wood. He pauses, raises his arm to his head and wipes the sweat and rain away.

"Hurley, are you here for a reason?"

Hurley looks down and away as Jack swings the ax up and back.

"Right. So, like, Sayid and I were listening to that radio that Bernard had and turns out its got a signal and stuff. And, well, we heard something. Music, man, like that Lawrence Welk shit or whatever."

Crabby. This conversation is pointless and making him feel something akin to crabby and irritated. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Well, you know, it's you…you know?"

Yeah. He knows. Or, rather, he knew.

He takes a deep breath. And another swing. And pauses once more.

"I'm not in charge here anymore, Hurley."

_- (change scene) -_

Jack can hear the breaking branches, the rustling of the underbrush.

"What now, Hurley?"

There isn't an answer. Jack turns slowly, ax in hand.

The wind whispers, and Jack swears there are words, a chorus of words, words he can't understand but make his skin crawl all the same.

There's no one there.

Jack turns back around and the rain begins to fall. Looking down, he wipes the sweat off his brow, propping the ax up on a pile of wood.

And he looks up.

"Shhh…"

And there's Walt, dripping wet, finger to his lips, standing among the trees.

"Walt?" His voice is strangely choked and the name comes out a muffled croak. "Walt?"

The boy keeps his finger to his lips, shaking his head for silence.

"Walt!"

And Jack can hear them again, the mumbling, the whispers, the nonsense.

He spins around quickly. No one there.

"Walt –"

No one there. There is no one there.

_- (change scene) - _

No one saw Jack moving across the beach. Suddenly, he was there, at the water and settlement's edge, ripping Sawyer's tent open.

"I need the guns, Sawyer. I saw Walt. He is out there and we have to go get him. Give me –"

"You saw Walt?" And Sayid whispers the question like a prayer he's not sure he wants answered.

"Yes, yes, I saw Walt. Sawyer –" Wild-eyed, he feels wild-eyed. He just needs the guns, he needs the guns, and the jungle and to know Walt is safe and for once just to have a little bit of control.

"No, Jack, wait a minute. This might not be –" Sayid moves slowly towards Jack and Sawyer, his arm raised, policeman style, but Jack merely brushes him aside.

"No, no more waiting. That boy is out there in the jungle and we need to bring him back. Give me the goddamn guns, Sawyer." It was so fluent, no segue, his explanation to Sayid and the quick pivot in Sawyer's direction.

Power struggles are nothing new to Jack. Since he opened his eyes on a canopy of green and a beached airliner in flames he has gone toe-to-toe with John Locke. Now he has the Others to contend with, facing off with an invisible enemy all in the name of land and possession. It is 1492 and Doc Jack Shephard flew the sky bright blue. He wishes they had remembered to pack the smallpox infested blankets.

He fought his father, an escalating conflict until the two men became nothing more than strangers trapped together. It was a drunken barroom brawl of words, the low blows, the cheap shots, and at the end, the very end of it all, the broken bottle over the head and the resignation of the chief of surgery.

He battled the grim reaper day in and day out in his OR. Both their faces covered and hands moving swiftly, methodically, cleanly. He dueled with the hereafter and every now and again he came out ahead.

He can take Sawyer. For fuck's sake, he can take Sawyer.

"What, we going hunting for humans now? Game of golf got a little old, did it?" Smartass. God-damn, motherfucking smartass. He can see Kate standing back, watching it all pan out. He doubts she'll intervene. And he wonders why he's not surprised.

"Sawyer, give me the guns."

"What am I gonna get in return?"

Punch in the jaw. Sawyer spits out blood. Jack's knuckles sting. He shakes it off and watches Sawyer wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I dare say, neighbor, Mister Rogers would be outraged at this behavior."

Punches him again. And again, and he feels a hand grip around his throat and chokes out a stream of garbled expletives. He doesn't hear a thing, not a thing, and as he raises his fist it almost feels as though he is back at the hospital, back at the hospital getting the job done.

He feels hands gripping his arms pulling him back and back, and his feet dragging across the rough sand. He can taste the blood and his shoulder aches.

He looks up to see Ana standing between the two of them. And Kate just stands there, head hung, and arms drawn in tight around her.

"Give me. The guns."

This is what you call a man on a mission. This is what you call a man possessed.

_- (changes scene) - _

It never ends well, the disintegration of one's character.

He found them. Or maybe, rather, they found him. The Others. There were two then only one and there was him, standing over a man, stuck in the mud and maybe it was blood, and all Jack knows is that he held a gun and but not any bullets, but he held a gun, a gun.

Jack nearly killed a man. Jack took a pistol and once he ran out of bullets he beat a man bloody and senseless into the ground. Jack almost killed a man. See Jack run. Jack is a hero fallen from grace. He might have lost his badge, his office and his honor in one fell swoop.

Jack is a surgeon. He has seen insides on the out and everything that composes the entity of a human, everything the skin and the muscle and the bone connects. And it was strange, how that childhood song ran through his ears as he raised the gun again and again. "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes."

He has seen a man or two or maybe more die on his operating table. It was never his fault. It was always someone else's. He was driving too fast or his wife got a little angry or the ladder didn't hold his weight or he didn't know the blow dryer was plugged in next to the bathtub. Jack was trying to save them.

He doesn't know what it means when the savior plays the role of saboteur.

But Ana knows how it feels. A sort of death all its own, only instead of a coffin and headstone you get handcuffs and punishment, penance, persecution. A promise that nothing will ever be the same and it's you alone who must sort out the consequences.

Ana knows.

_- (change scene) -_

They weren't supposed to be here.

They found Jack, bloodied, not his own, and howling with violence and vengeance and something none of them could name nor wanted to.

It was disconcerting at best. To watch Jack be dragged away from a man, his face nearly bashed in, fingers crumbled, shaking in agony. It was disturbing at best to watch Sawyer, calm and steady, moving among the crowd that gathered. In control.

Kate had refused to go near.

She found her way, she found her way and she found an axe. Kate found her way into the jungle, overcome, completely overcome. She could feel the rain stinging her cold skin, she could feel it and she couldn't. None of this is real. None of it.

She has heard of things like culture shock, but she wonders what the name is for this. Wandering into a world unknown, and waking, waking one morning to realize the sun rises at dusk and the moon shines at noon. None of it is real.

Sawyer finds her like this. A panic-stricken mess, thrashing at everything that axe could touch. And there she was, screaming as she chopped away at the branches. "We have to get out of here. We have to leave. Nothing is right. He's not a killer! He is not a killer he's not a killer Jesus he doesn't kill people! It's all wrong, wrong, wrong. Don't you understand? Nothing…nothing is right, nothing is like it's supposed to be.

We aren't supposed to be _here_ anymore!"

Finally, as the rainfall begins to slow, the ax falls heavy from her limp arms. And Sawyer just watches. She turns, a mix of sweat and dripping rainwater slipping down her arms, shaking, shaking. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, swipes her hair back and out of her face. And just stands there.

Her eyes say it all. And Sawyer, he can feel the push and the pull deep within him. The push the push that led him into the hatch and into her and the pull that will invariably leave him all alone. The push and the pull, the thrust and the drag.

Oh, Jesus, he knows what comes next. He knows what happens now. He knows. He knows and he knows and he can't find a way to deny.

"Sawyer…" Her breath catches on the second syllable, a sort of hiccup, hysteria dulling into something manageable. Something manageable, for her perhaps, but he doubts that he can deal.

"Don't say it. I don't even wanna hear it, Freckles." Warning, threatening, menacing. He used to be so good at this, but even to him, in the claustrophobic jungle and the thick, tight air it sounds fake and forced.

"I love you." And she says it the way a person would grit out "fuck you" at the close of an argument. That white flag, waving in surrender, or maybe even in an unstated challenge. Choose your words wisely, and, then, point and draw. "I love you, and I am tired of –"

"Stop it!" It echoes, and she stops, mouth still open, and fuck it, she's hurt, she is hurt and he can tell from her stance she is pissed as hell, and he silently wonders amid the warring warning bells and triumphant tune what took her so damn long.

"Stop what? Feeling? I'm sorry, Sawyer, I'm not you. I can't just turn it on and turn it off, and you know what? I don't think you can either.

I love you." She thinks by repeating it, nice and slow as though to a rambunctious toddler in an attempt to gain acquiesce and appeasement. But all he can see are bags filled with $600,000 and a pair of cowboy boots at eye-level. All he think is take the money and run and ignore the echoing buckshot and the thud of falling down.

"No, Kate. You don't. Jesus, you don't even fucking know me. I gave you a glimpse and you nearly wrung my damn neck over it. I got what I wanted. We're done here."

"You got what you _wanted_? No, no…I…That isn't you! Stop acting like you are two different people. You're a man who pulled a dick move in some lame attempt to... I get that, OK? I get it. But I'm still here. Stop pretending that's what you're all about, because it isn't. I've seen…I've seen you, and I…. Just stop pretending…stop pretending and let me…let me love –"

"No, Kate, you stop pretending. You don't know anything, alright? You feel a little twinge of emotion and suddenly it's hearts and roses and goddamn wedding bells and you feel a little and, what, just like that, it's love?"

"Stop it."

"No, you listen. You call me a liar? You think I'm the one pretending here? Look in a goddamn mirror, Kate."

"Then…then why? Why fight Jack, why fight him for me and waste so much time and energy on trying to…claim me if you don't…if you don't love me?"

"'Cause if I don't have you, I don't want anyone else laying a goddamn hand on you. But I don't have you. I _can't _have you."

"Why not?" Her voice breaking on the last word, and he can't really take much more of this.

"Don't you get it? This isn't real! None of this is real!"

"But I believe it is."

"For now you do. You believe it, for now." He hates how much emotion he seems to have strung out on each syllable. It's an emasculation of sorts.

She steps forward, small tiny steps that don't bring her that much closer to him. But she moves, towards him. She moves.

And as he watches her come closer and closer he can only wonder. Wonder what would have happened had she said, no, you take the money and pay them. I forgive you. I love you.

I'll stay with you.

"There's nowhere else for me to go."

They are surrounded by water on all four sides. They are shrouded in danger and fear and the constant promise of death. No, there is nowhere else to go, and that might be a fact.

But he knows, oh, Jesus, he knows as he looks into her eyes. She sure as hell isn't talking about geography, and as he almost smiles as he thinks. Yes, I am $600,000 heavier.

_- (change scene) - _

He could summarize it all, if it ever came to that. He could do it police interrogation style or sitting pretty on a couch across from Barbara Walters. It could all sound so simple. Tension escalated among the survivors. Jack, Ana, Sawyer and Kate were little more than a fragmented mess, barely speaking to each other and when they were, never really saying anything at all. Jack tore off into the jungle after spotting Walt and nearly killed one of the Others. Kate flipped, broke down a little and cried. And he, Sawyer, just watched it all go to hell, wondering if it was he who had lit the match. And there was little Ana, serving as the fuel that kept the hellfire burning.

She likes to think they are all inherently good. But still, Ana knows. They just possess the capability to harm, and sometimes, sometimes they forget when to stop. Or hell, even how.

And now, in the glow of a campfire that never seems to quit, as Jack sits there, staring straight ahead into the flames, Ana realizes she is merely second best. But she will accept that if it means she has a place to sleep tonight. And the best part of being second: you never really can disappoint.

And Jack, he finds the flaws in Ana and dreams of ways to correct them. Sometimes when he holds her, he imagines she is Kate, that she is Sarah, instead. He imagines she is broken, impaired, limp, spine severed, and they are his hands that she needs in order to stand tall again.

Kate spends her nights with Sawyer. Every morning she wakes up alone. Every morning she wakes up to start again, start anew, and silently plea her case.

And she wants to. Start it all over again. But she knows. She knows that the thought is little more than childish, naïve. It is wishful thinking to imagine they might be able to shake hands and introduce themselves the way they never did. Tell him her name is Kate and she apologizes in advance for any and all she has come to lack.

But she catches his eye as he emerges from his tent. Watches him push the flap back and stop, half hunched over, shirt unbuttoned, hair wild. And they lock in place, everyone skittering into and out of view, blurry images huddling along the periphery.

And as they stand there, yards apart in the cool morning mist, unmoving, unflinching, she stops imagining, stops lying about how everything should be.

It has been everything but nice to meet him. But she doesn't think she could handle it any other way.

No. No. They never really needed an introduction.

_- (change scene) - _

It's funny. It all slows to a pause; the sun peeks out from around the clouds. It's all or nothing now, no room for half-gestures any more.

"You know what anarchy is, Jack?"

Jack doesn't bother to talk. He just stands there, hands on his hips, sweat rolling down his bare arms, staring into the setting sun with Sawyer there next to him. He imagines that if it weren't for the withering stare gracing his face or Sawyer's crossed arms they would look like friends, two old friends, two war buddies, two men who survived hell and were now surveying the passage of time and the closing of day.

But they're not. And probably never will be. And Jack won't answer his questions. He'll just let him keep the conversation rolling all on his own.

"I do believe we have a nice case of it on our hands right here."

And he's right. The guns aren't in storage and they're switching hands faster than the last of the food from the hatch had. He doesn't know what to make of the armed population. He doesn't know what to make of the lack of a definition and the fact that the shallow facades they have all be fronting have been swept away, and here they are, bare and naked and heavily armed.

The truth is there are no rules. The truth is there is no order.

The truth is, Jack is sick of trying to make order out of chaos. The truth is. The truth: the order is never real. It's just dirt swept under the rug with the problems still multiplying underneath, like fucking rabbits.

"Just let it be." The sun continues to slide under the horizon and they bother continue to stare straight ahead.

And maybe someday, someday, if luck is on their side. They will no longer find themselves just lying there, lying in the sun.

* * *

_I pretend like no one else  
__To try to control myself  
__I'm sort of like a lion's cage  
__Such a cautious display_

_Remember, take hold of your time here  
__Give some meanings to the means  
__To your end_

* * *

A resolution of sorts. A settling. 

Kate has Sawyer, but only on his terms. And she'll take it. For now.

Ana and Jack use each other and maybe she will call it love and he will call it comfort, and hopefully they'll end up on the same page before either death or the rescue choppers claim their lives again.

Or maybe not. Maybe it is easier to just leave things as they are and call them by a different name. A rose by any other name might smell just as sweet. But you might be more apt to remember the thorns rather than petals and wonder what was so charming about the flower in the first place. Love might not be natural, and instead, man-made. It really might not matter at all.

They call it lust. When maybe it is love. They call it settling. When maybe it is something more.

It's a game of semantics. Maybe it is love, adoration, obsession, fixation, addiction, stupidity, sex, and self-immolation.

Maybe it is all a lie.

The world might be nothing more than a collection of delusions we fondly refer to as perception. Our memories twist with time and emotion until the same tale is retold by four different people detailing four different experiences and four different outcomes.

Maybe it's an adolescence, part deux. Nothing more than swapping spit and awkward exchanges, pretending it is something more, something mature, something real.

We tell ourselves the bad is never the worst and that the good is the best we will ever get. Flaws become quirks and pain is deemed necessary to live. Lust is love and lack of understanding is hate.

Lying might just be the great pastime of humanity.

And the truth is? It's the only thing we all share in common.

Reality might just spin on an axis all its own. But we're all too dizzy, too busy, to latch on to the turning of the truth.

We will lie, in point blank range, and say, no, this is not a cage, but home. And maybe, if you're lucky, we'll ask you to crawl on in.

* * *

_not even jail_

* * *


End file.
